Teaching with Technology

 Andrew Czaplewski

Marketing Education Review, Volume 19 No. 1 (Sprint 2009)

 This is a short, concise report and “how-to” on automating a grading rubric. I thought it worthwhile to explore as a possible teaching “tool”. After reading I am glad to report that this appears to be a relatively easy and useful application, much unlike the other technologies for teaching I have encountered.

 Grading is the least glamorous job of teaching and one which so directly affects students and their perception of a teacher and class. To anyone who has taught, it can also be a substantial amount of work. Rubrics, by laying out clear expectations, can help reduce the time it takes to grade. They can even allow or better enable assistants to do the grading. They also “hold the promise of making grading more evenhanded regardless” of when or where the grading was done (Coffeehouse or 3 am kitchen table.)  Inherent in the use of Rubrics is the student’s inability to self-asses their performance in the categories. The limited column space provided in most Rubric designs further diminishes the amount/length of commenting that can occur. They often completely overlook the opportunity to comment and are used to simply assign a grade thereby missing an opportunity for constructive feedback.  This feedback and teachable moments are especially important to the Grad Student community.

 The Computer-Assisted Grading Rubric allows the teacher/assistant to be much more specific in commenting while providing thoughtfully constructed comments and feedback to students. They feel much more involved in the grading and the thought process for the assigned grade becomes clearer. The process is relatively easy. As the author points out, anyone who has graded a number of papers finds themselves using the same comments repeatedly. You simply take the rubric a step father. Once the rubric is written, and the “gradations of quality for each graded element” are established, the teacher should create a “comprehensive database of comments” for each one. It is a menu of sorts that “minimizes the effort of re-creating comments and allows comments and feedback to be refined so they are more carefully constructed to be fair, encouraging, and consistent.” This  menu that you choose from actually allows you to provide more detailed information to a student and by default keeps the playing field of grading fair. It can be added to or changed at any time and can become a very dynamic tool, changing to meet the new  needs of students each semester.    

He suggests using Microsoft Excel for this process. Once the menu of comments is ready, a code is assigned to each. By using the INDEX and MATCH functions in Excel, the instructor enters the comment code onto a students grade form (previously set up using the rubric) and comment is pulled in using a “cut” and “special paste” to replace the values with the actual comments. 

 Czaplewski tested this grading system in a graduate level International Marketing class. He felt given the case study nature of grad courses and the students, whom he identified as vocal regarding the specific nature of their feedback, the importance of detailed information on the grading would be most effective. Though a small study, the results showed that there were “improved perceptions of grading fairness and ….course satisfaction.” He notes that the approach is less “draining” because you have already evaluates the balance of your words for harshness and encouragement. “The focus is purely on assessment rather than on what to say or how to say it.” I think applying a technological solution to a time consuming problem and improving the end result not just the processing speed is a win/win situation. This is a decidedly low tech approach but nonetheless, it is effective and worthwhile. Providing students with feedback that they can use is an important part of a teacher’s job. Employing a small technology that allows an instructor to do this in a fair and time saving way is a benefit to everyone, teacher and student alike.